Missing apps, missing Safari warnings, and more

I receive a lot of questions and while each is a gem, some can be answered with just a few words. Rather than issue those few words and suffer the scrutiny of my Betters—who like seeing a column that’s not overshadowed by its surrounding advertising—I save these things for a time when I can dump them en masse. Now is that time.

Missing Voice Memos

We begin with reader Worth Gretter who writes:

I have a 4th generation iPod touch. The Voice Memos app is not on it, although I would expect it to be since this model has a built-in microphone. I can’t find a way to download it, apparently since it should already be on my touch. What’s going on here?

Voice Memos is one of those Apple apps that you can’t delete, so it’s there, you’re just not looking in the right place. With iOS version somethingorother Apple placed it in the Utilities folder alongside Contacts and Calculator. Tap this folder and you’ll find Voice Memos.

Hint for the future: As you add more apps to your iPod you’ll likely lose track of some of them. Go to the first Home page and swipe to the right (or press the Home button once) to view the Search page. Enter the name of your app and when it appears in the list, tap it to launch it.

Missing Safari warning

And then there’s reader Who Wishes To Not Be Named:

Somehow Safari no longer warns me if I attempt to close all my tabs (unfortunately, a mistake I seem to make at least once a day). How do I re-enable this safety feature?

Here’s how it works under Snow Leopard: Under the Safari menu choose Preferences and in the resulting window click on the Tabs item. Enable the Confirm Before Closing Multiple Tabs or Windows option.

This setting is missing in the Lion version of Safari. However, in the case of such an “oops” moment, just choose either History -> Reopen All Windows From Last Session or Reopen Last Closed Window (depending on which is most appropriate for your situation). Your window, with its open tabs, will reappear.

Using a PC drive with a Mac

Reader Margo Bangert is moving from a PC to a Mac and writes:

I need to get stuff off of my Dell and its external USB hard drive and on to my Mac. Do I have to put everything on a thumb drive and transfer it over that way?

Only if you’re the kind of person who enjoys sorting their morning Rice Krispies by size. Transferring a lot of data via thumb drive would be tedious to the extreme. No, all you have to do is move the stuff from your PC to the external hard drive attached to it. Then unmount the drive on the PC and jack it into your Mac. It will mount and you can then simply copy the data from it to the Mac. This is possible because Macs are able to mount drives formatted for PCs. (The reverse ain’t necessarily so.)

Keep an eye on your opponent

Reader Pat Rooney writes:

I would like to play a game with my grandson while I am iChatting or FaceTiming him. Is this possible?

In most cases on the Mac, yes. Just leave the FaceTime or iChat window open with your video chat running and you should be able to see and hear each other. Where you’ll have difficulty is with games that take over the entire screen. In such cases you’ll lose the video window.

Re-downloading the Lion installer

Reader Bill Windborn writes:

I purchased Lion from the App Store, of course, and installed it on my Mac Pro with Snow Leopard aboard, but I didn’t save a copy of the Lion installer. When I try to download it again I’m told that I have it, yet I don’t see it anywhere on my Mac. What do I do?

Dan Frakes, who is the resident king of all that is installing OS X Lion, writes:

If you’re trying to download the Lion installer onto a Mac that’s already running Lion (either the GM or the official release), the Mac App Store will claim that Lion is already installed and, again, prevent you from downloading it. Try these tricks:

Option+click the Buy App button in the Mac App Store. If that doesn’t work, switch to the Mac App Store’s main page and then Option+click the Purchases button in the toolbar. If that doesn’t work, quit the Mac App Store app and then hold down the Option key while launching the Mac App Store again. One of these three procedures should get rid of the “Installed” status for Lion and let you download it.)